CO-DESIGN AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A METHOD TO EMPOWER END-USERS IN VISUAL COMMUNICATION
Year: 2024
Editor: Grierson, Hilary; Bohemia, Erik; Buck, Lyndon
Author: Payne Morgan, Addie; Howell, Bryan F.; Kilbourn-Barber, Grace
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Professional; Brigham Young University, United States of America; Plant Podium
Page(s): 557 - 562
DOI number: 10.35199/EPDE.2024.94
ISBN: 978-1-912254-200
ISSN: 3005-4753
Abstract
Co-design brings designers, end-users, researchers, and other pertinent stakeholders together to forge meaningful design solutions. It dismantles traditional barriers between professional designers and end-users by fostering collaborative, participatory design development processes. This paper explores using an AI visualisation tool, Vizcom, in a co-design workshop. The tool helps participants without visualisation skills to convert their rough sketches into refined visual representations. Thirty-six undergraduate students from Brigham Young University across ten disciplines participated in the study. Participants were introduced to the principles of co-design and the functionalities of the Vizcom, including how to create accounts, craft effective textual prompts for AI, and adjust the drawing influence parameter to optimise the visualisation of their ideas. Participants worked in pairs, designated as ""users"" and ""professionals.” Prompted to reflect on their campus lunch food heating experiences, users shared insights with professionals who conducted interviews to pinpoint specific problems. Following this, professionals and users brainstormed solutions together. The users then sketched the proposed solutions, guided by the insights and ideas discussed during their collaborative session. After completing their sketches, they used their mobile phones to upload their sketches and detailed prompts into Vizcom, generating visual representations of their concept. The study collected feedback from both professional and user roles through separate surveys, assessing the effectiveness of the AI in capturing and enhancing their conceptual solutions. The findings suggest new avenues for co-creation in product design, emphasising the potential of AI tools to bridge the gap between rudimentary sketches and sophisticated visual outputs.
Keywords: Collaborative product development methods, Vizcom research, product visualisation, sketching with AI